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The efficiency of new wind farms is far from "feeble"

As luck would have it, and in the interests of full disclosure, I've just finished writing a report on behalf of the Renewable UK trade association investigating the efficiency of wind farms.

During my research for the piece I spoke to numerous wind turbine engineers who agreed that the combination of improved turbine technologies, better offshore locations, and sophisticated systems for monitoring wind flows is leading to a steady and inexorable increase in wind farm's energy efficiency.

Of course, the industry would say that wouldn't they. But their confidence is borne out by official government figures, which show that over the past few years load factors, the measure revealing a wind farm's actual output as a percentage of its maximum possible output, have risen steadily.

In fact, the best performing modern wind farms now deliver load factors of over 50 per cent, putting them pretty much on a par with the load factors from some traditional energy sources such as nuclear.

So, you can imagine my surprise to see a story in the Sunday Times this weekend headlined "Feeble wind farms fail to hit full power", which detailed how over 20 wind farms are producing less than a fifth of their theoretical maximum output.

Leaving aside the fact that the only way any wind farm would ever hit "full power" was if the UK was buffeted by high winds for an entire year, it is almost certainly the case that some wind farms have performed poorly, just as some nuclear and coal power plants have delivered very low levels of efficiency. But, equally some wind farms will have performed very well, far exceeding average outputs - that after all is how averages work.

Why did the Sunday Times fail to offer a more balanced view, providing similarly in-depth information on the wind farms that are working well and delivering an increasing proportion of the UK's energy mix?

Well, it emerged this morning that when the Sunday Times reported that the figures were based on an analysis of Ofgem figures, what it neglected to say was that the analysis was undertaken on behalf of the Campaign to Limit Onshore Wind Farm Developments.

Little wonder Renewable UK is now considering making a formal complaint to the PCC. It is akin to reporting a story saying the majority of people are opposed to nuclear power and not mentioning the poll was commissioned by Greenpeace, or detailing how new research shows there is no danger of captured carbon emissions leaking from underground storage sites, and neglecting to reveal that the research was commissioned by E.ON.

Such reports may well be entirely accurate, but the sources of the information are surely of relevance.

There is an entirely valid debate to be had about which low carbon energy source should ultimately dominate our energy mix, and maybe the Sunday Times is right to suggest that it would be wiser to focus on "technologies we know can deliver, such as nuclear and clean coal" (although it would save everyone a huge amount of hassle if the unsubsidised nuclear reactor and commercial scale carbon capture and storage system the Sunday Times is obviously keeping in the News International car park was made more widely available).

For what it's worth, I'd argue that we need to develop a mix of low carbon energy sources and while we undoubtedly need more wind energy capacity I'd probably agree that the government has become a little too fixated on wind and has perhaps not paid enough attention over the past decade to alternatives such as nuclear, biomass, waste-to-energy, marine energy and even clean coal.

But it is impossible to have an informed debate when it is being continuously skewed by countless vested interests and a glaring lack of transparency in the reporting of opposing view points.

Last week, I wrote that "if we were to run a story every time the press delivered an unbalanced report on climate change issues we would not have time to write anything else". But then again, if that's the way it's got to be, so be it.